Jen’s voice dropped to a whisper:
Maria Elisabetta glanced down at herself to make certain she was positioned in the center, goosebumps rising on her skin in her unheated cell. Then she began to speak the words of the incantation—
“Aren’t you going to describe her body?” Bill cut in. “How old is she? If she’s young, she’s gotta be checking out her own figure.”
Jen looked up, her expression shuttering again. “That’s the farthest thing from her mind. She’s risking her life. Her figure doesn’t matter.”
Bill flicked her words away with a wave of his hand. “But not to the audience. Trust me. Readers want to know what she looks like naked. And women, especially young ones, are always thinking about—”
“She’s a nun,” Godiva cut him off. “About to raise an evil demon. Trust me, the last thing a nun is thinking about is boobs and booty.”
“Now, Bill,” Cassandra piped up. “I don’t claim any expertise in the Renaissance, though I’ve read quite a bit about it, as well as a great deal about life in the cloisters, and let me just drop a hint about nun habits, ha ha, forgive the little pun—”
“But she just took off the habit, is what I’m saying,” Bill stated. “Readers want visuals!”
Cassandra fluffed her short blond frizz. “You’re very right, and Jen, it’s important to make certain that the colors of the habits correspond to which branch of—”
“A-HEM!” Doris—veteran high school teacher—cleared her throat with a vehemence that nearly rattled the windows. “Go on, Jen.”
But Jen had laid her pages down. “It’s okay. I was done anyway.”
Bird said quickly, “I want to hear more.”
Then, to her surprise, Mikhail spoke up. “If you don’t mind a first timer offering commentary, I was impressed by the picture you built of that time. The details are very convincing, and drew me right into y
our story.”
“Thank you,” Jen said. “But that’s all that I’ve written.”
Bird began to clap, and then the others joined it.
Bill gave it about five seconds, then broke in. “In that case, let me show you how you build a realistic woman character.” He already had his expensive tablet on his lap, its screen casting a cold light on his face. “You’ll remember that Wilhelm Stryker, my protagonist, is being chased by Mexican gangsters and Russian mobsters. The last chapter ended when he was driving his Porsche up Rodeo Drive to a meeting after receiving a mysterious message.”
He adjusted his fedora over his thinning blond hair, and launched into his reading:
Wilhelm’s ex-wife Cindy shrieked into the phone. He held it away from his ear, but her metal-shredder voice still reached him as she bitched and moaned. He hung up on her.
Wilhelm stepped forward, letting the phone drop back into his pocket. His foot thumped solidly against the sidewalk. He took another step, and his left foot hit the sidewalk with a manly thud. With his left hand he adjusted the Burberry fedora that was his trademark over his thick bronze locks as his right hand tapped the Glock Longslide hidden beneath his Brunello Cicinelli leather jacket.
“Oooh,” cooed the sweet chime of a young woman’s voice.
He looked up and saw three young, nubile, beautiful, slim young chicks with the huge, perfect breasts that gorgeous young chicks have, like watermelons.
He was a man of the world, and he knew just from looking at those three young chicks that they were hookers. He started to pass on by, but the three of them waved at him frantically, their huge perfect breasts bouncing up and down like sexy water balloons.
“We’re hookers,” said the gorgeous blonde. “But you don’t have to pay.”
“Oh, no,” the luscious redhead said. “We’d pay YOU if we could afford it!”
The young brunette ran to him, her melons bouncing and almost falling out of her scanty top. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
“Please,” she begged. “Please come home with us! No charge!”
Bird had been looking down during Bill’s reading, torn between annoyance and laughter, and not wanting either to show on her face. But now she couldn’t resist a peek at Mikhail to see how he was taking Bill’s parade of the hookers. Her nerves sang like champagne fizz when her gaze met his.
Mikhail’s mouth quirked in the tiniest smile. When she smiled back, he lifted one slim hand and tipped an imaginary fedora.
For the first time in all the years she had been coming to the group, a gust of laughter bubbled up from deep inside her, taking her completely by surprise. She let out a guffaw. When the entire room looked her way, she quickly turned it into a coughing fit. “Sorry! Sorry! A crumb . . .”